I joined the Knorr July 4th 2005 in Miami. We had a great shipboard party, 
wonderful food as always, and first class seats for the fire works display.
On this trip I sailed as the relief Shipboard Science Support Group (SSSG) techician; we make sure the science instrumentation is up and running, email keeps flowing, and the computer network remains up and running. We are the first point of contact for the science party in case of any problems or complaints. Check out the WHOI and the Knorr websites for more info.
From Miami we sailed through the Panama Canal. We arrived there early in the evening to get locked through at night. The locks are rather small; you can see why ships are designed to 'panamax' width. Any ship wider than that simply wouldn't fit in the locks. 
These little train carts pull the ships through the canal entrance lock. 
Believe it or not, the lines are transferred from the ship to the shore with this little boat: 
I wonder how they keep from overturning with all this propwash everywhere. Here we are on our way. 
There is a bar to the left in this picture. I wouldn't mind spending some time there looking at all the vessels coming through.
Here we are in the Pacific, looking out at Panama City.
Just another big city, Spanish speaking. All cities in South America reminded me a lot of European cities, more so than an American city. Perhaps because the architecture is more varied and intricate, and very reminicent of the Mediterranean - notwithstanding the skyscrapers of course. Corporate culture is starting to crop up globally. From Panama we took of for the Galapagos Islands with about 28 very smart, hardworking and fun scientists and grad students. We were about to face an equator crossing. Ominous signs started popping up everywhere. King Neptune was going to pay us a visit and make sure we were going to be initiated into the realm... Most of us (myself included) were either in denial of our upcoming torture, or planning to hide in the airducts for a week. Threatening emails continued as we inched closer and closer to the equator. These shellbacks were very much into the game, and we had to come up with something to reciprocate. It became clear to us Polliwogs that we had to come up with entertainment for the Shellbacks as to ease our upcoming torture. Finally the dreaded evening arrived - the Shellbacks were going to give us our wog names, after which we were to perform skits. We were led out on the main deck where we had to kneel before the executive Shellback that would read the charges against us, and give us our new names. Here are some pictures of the naming ceremony:
Yes, very humiliating treatment indeed. We all got at least one egg cracked open on our head, and most got a bucket of water after that. Some very unruly wogs got dunked in a barrel of water as you can see. The shellbacks were very creative with their naming, and we were actually howling with laughter most of the time. After the naming ceremony our skits were performed. Marian came up with great new lyrics to Gloria Gaynor's 'I will survive' that a bunch of us performed while doing the electric slide. My favorite skit probably was the one where some wog crew members did a great imitation of more senior shellback crew members to the tune of Michael Jackson's 'I'm bad.' I actually cried it was so funny. This one was very good too:
performed by Adam and Wendy. The Shellbacks spread the rumor that we were about to come up to a cell phone buoy where we would have cell phone reception. The crew wogs were actually counceled to not look unprofessional and not fall for this, but quite a few scientists did. This skit was a spoof on a spoof, and was very funny. There was an amazing amount of creativity unleashed in the three days it took to cross the equator. That night we were told to fabricate signs with our wog names, and we were informed that we were to wear our clothing inside out and backwards. Great hilarity the next day as we all looked pretty funny:
The shellbacks kept us waiting quite awhile that day before commencing with the main torture event. The anticipation of what was to come was a lot worse than the actual event. We were quite nervous. Truth be told, our ring leader in mischief came up with a fantastic plan to sabotage the shellbacks torture ceremony somewhat. We knew that there was going to be an 'electric chair' and some other unpleasantries involving a toilet, so we set out to steal these props and hide them somewhere. The chair was in the port forward (carpentry) van. Marian pulled off an excellent diversion scheme on the bridge so that Tyler and I could walk into the port van, remove the chair and stick it into the chemical (starboard) van, all right in plain view of the bridge. After that me, Adam and Nathan went into the machine shop, distracted the people on watch just long enough to get the toilet into the elevator, and moved it up two decks to hide it into the analytical lab. We were quite proud of ourselves:
We were also terrified that anyone would find out who came up with this plan as we knew the torture would be that much more severe... Luckily for us nobody did figure out who hid the props. The main event was a little delayed as the shellbacks frantically looked for their equipment. Not for very long though! We were all led through the gauntlet of the chair where we got a lampful of garbage dumped on us:
The toilet where we had to find the treasure in the vomit colored garbage soup (I think it was an egg):
And finally the garbage shoot where we slid on our bellies through the garbage that the Shellbacks had been collecting the previous week:
After that we had to kneel before the Royal Court, consisting of King Neptune, the Queen, and the Baby:
They were to judge us and mete out some final indignity before declaring us all Shellbacks. Enjoy these pictures taken during our initiation ceremony:
Finally, we were all declared Shellbacks!
After all that we had a great dance party out on the main deck.
I don't think I ever had this much fun on a ship before. Many thanks go out to all participants for making this an unforgetable once-in-a-lifetime event!